DESCRIPTION (Applicant's Description) Funds are requested for partial support of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology, to be held at Stanford University June 20-25, 1998. We are requesting partial support of the expenses for invited plenary lectures and concurrent symposium speakers, as well as partial support of the travel expenses of minority students. The meeting will have about 800 registrants and will provide opportunities to hear the latest work from international leaders in the field, as well as from younger scientists whose work will be chosen from the abstracts for oral presentation. There will be two large poster sessions, each for two days, allowing everyone a chance to present their work to a richly diverse audience. The topics of the plenary sessions have been chosen to represent some of the most exciting areas of current developmental biology research, including Constructing the Body Plan, Signaling Systems, Neural Development and Patterning, and Cell Guidance Systems. Symposia topics are far ranging: organogenesis, signal transduction, coordination and maintenance of gene regulation, cell biology of development, axial patterning, development and evolution, eye development, medicine and development, morphogenesis, home box gene function and evolution. Work with plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi will be included. Multidisciplinary approached will be emphasized, and special emphasis will be put upon connections with human biology and medicine. Continuing the success of issue-oriented workshops at recent annual SDB meetings, we will hold workshops on education, genomics, applications of computers, funding and future directions in science, ethical issues, and specific research topics such as mesoderm induction. We anticipate a very exciting meeting.